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Name: C. L. Palmer
Location: Fort Wayne, IN
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The Culture Gap

Posted by C. L. Palmer on Wednesday, August 20, 2008 2:36:57 PM
As a teacher, I'm always hearing about the supposed "educational achievement gap." This is supposed to make me feel guilty that certain ethnic groups are doing worse (on average) than others. However, from my vantage point, those numbers are extremely deceptive. In short, they tell a story far removed from what actually goes on in a classroom.
 
The gaps that actually exist are cultural, not racial. They stem from a family and neighborhood culture which undervalues achievement, or at least the effort required to produce it. The cultures to which I refer are the "trash" cultures, those whose practitioners frequently appear on programs such as Maury Povich or Jerry Springer. Sure, they'd all love to acquire wealth. However, they do not promote those social and moral values which, in real life, lead to it. Students who come from a trash culture often behave in a belligerent manner regardless of the stimuli in their surroundings. They are taught to be bellicose by nature, oppositional to structure and authority. Whatever an authority figure tells them is suspect by nature, and their gut instinct is to resist. They are loud and quarrelsome. This holds true across lines of color and nationality; it's just as true in a ghetto, a barrio, or a trailer park.
 
We don't suffer from endemic racism. We suffer from a surplus of negative cultural baggage. This baggage is, of course, passed from parent to child in a line of wasted potential that creates what appear to be racial differences, but are, in fact, simply based on patterns of behavior. As I've told many a student, there is no such thing as a baggy pants gene. Those neighborhood and community affectations which impede achievement are learned, and can be unlearned. This, however, will not happen until we rid ourselves of two very foolish ideas.

The first idea is the equation of race and culture. Anyone who has studied sociology knows very well that for each race, there are nigh infinite cultures and subcultures. There is no such thing as the black culture, or the white culture, etc. Europe alone has a wide variety of individual cultures in a relatively small geographic area, and thus serves as a simple refutation of the nonsense the American media perpetuate, asserting that blacks are inherently culturally different from whites, as are Asians and Hispanics as well. This is nonsense. What cultural differences do exists are trends, not absolutes, and result from a mixture of national origin and family dynamics. Thus it is that third generation immigrants have generally been absorbed into the cultural mainstream, regardless of where their grandparents came from.

The second ridiculous notion is the idea that all cultures are equal, or at least that they are all equally valid. This is obviously false as well. To argue from the extreme, the Nazis had a unique culture, with its own cosmology and belief system. Was that a valid culture? Should it, and the implications which flow from it, have been tolerated? Did we make a huge sociological mistake in defeating Nazi culture, and subsequently stigmatizing its expression? Of course not. The same, obviously, is true of the trash cultures. They produce negative results when put into practice. They have led to mass poverty, vice, and ignorance. Trash cultures must be eradicated for the benefit of those future generations who would otherwise be destroyed by them.

The inferences made in The Bell Curve ignored the effects of culture on intelligence. This becomes obvious when one realizes that no measurement was made of white trash culture. I believe that had such a breakdown been made in the data, the results would have been deracialized, while still angering many. No one wants to believe that any group he belongs to is somehow inferior, even if that group is simply one of culture and habit, and is therefore maleable. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would still have howled, but the authors of the study could have credibly maintained that no racism was involved.

My best and brightest students have always been a racially diverse group. I've never taught a gifted class without at least one student from every race. However, the thing that all of them have had in common is culture. Their parents have all belonged to cultures that value achievement. Thus, their children achieve. If we can somehow get the lawmakers to comprehend this simple fact, and to work toward a solution, we'll never have to compare our students by race again. Considering the fact that many students are racially mixed these days anyway, race seems something of a moot point in the modern era. We may finally be on the verge of overcoming discrimination, for the simple fact that we'll all be in the same boat.
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How to Fix Education in America

Posted by C. L. Palmer on Tuesday, June 10, 2008 10:42:39 PM
First, let us be rid of the notion of school vouchers as a panacea. Allowing the government to fund private schools will also allow government to put strings on the money. Here's how it will go...
 
First, the government will give a generous voucher to any student who wishes to attend a private school. Public school students will flood the private schools.
 
As many of the rowdier and more unproductive begin to be expelled or disciplined, complaints will mount. Jesse Jackson will ride in like the cavalry. Lawsuits will be filed. Legislation will be drawn up.
 
Within three years, most private schools will have expanded to meet the new demand. They will be in hawk up to their eyeballs. They will be dependent on government funded students to meet their financial obligations.
 
Cognizant of this fact, Congress and the various state legislatures will enact "educational equality" laws, severely hampering the private schools. Corporal punishment will be virtually banned. Students with problem behavior will have to be kept on. Students who fail to meet educational goals will be considered a reflection of the private schools, not their own laziness. Funding cuts will be threatened if a private school fails to "turn these students around".
 
In short, the private schools will be turned into duplicates of today's public schools. This is inevitable. The only thing privatization will do is ruin the private schools.
 
Now, let us see what can and should be done to improve education.
 
1. Schools must be restructured, eschewing the traditional K-12 model. Students will instead be measured by ability zones. An end-of-year test will determine if a student has passed into the next ability zone. Schools will continue to be organized by age (for some fairly obvious reasons), but classes will be grouped by achievement. When an ability level (as indicated by a set of skills to be mastered) has been measurably and objectively passed, the student moves on. If a student fails to pass, he remains at the present level until he does.
 
2. Diplomas must not be given unless all required criteria have been met. Period. Those students who are simply unable or unwilling to meet the criteria should be given the opportunity for vocational training.
 
3. Vouchers should be given to students who fail to meet behavior requirements. Those students should be sent to military academies, in which corporal punishment is allowed and used often. Toilets will be cleaned, and many vocationally useful experiences will be gained.
 
4. Non-citizens should not be eligible to receive Pell grants or any other form of government aid for college expenses. It is quite foolish of us to pay a foreigner's way through college so he may then go home and steal American jobs using the training we provided for him.
 
5. All schools should be required to find out and report the citizenship and/or immigration status of all enrolled students and their parents. Any violations of U.S. immigration policy must be reported and acted upon for that school to remain funded.
 
6. A law should be passed limiting the expenditure of public school funds outside of the actual school site. Ninety-five percent of funds should be spent at the individual school level. This may be used to pay for teacher salaries, classrooms, textbooks and materials, upkeep and maintenance of the grounds, etcetera. The other five percent of the funds may be spent on administration outside of the individual school site. (You would be appalled at the paltry amount of money that makes its way toward educating the actual students in our country.)
 
7. Corporal punishment, in the form of forced labor, should be allowable at all U.S. schools.
 
8. A universal curriculum should be made available to any school that wishes to use it. This curriculum, designed by actual teachers, would enable those who use it to pass the proficiency tests at the end of the year.
 
If these eight steps were followed, education in this country would flower and bloom as never before. Will this occur? Not so long as lily-livered politicians place more value on their continued presence in the halls of power than in solving the nation's problems. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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